The Microsoft tycoon Bill Gates and the UK
chancellor, George Osborne, have pledged to fight a war on the world’s deadliest
disease, malaria, with the aim of eliminating it by 2040. Speaking at a
conference at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, the pair announced
£3bn in research funding in the UK to combat the mosquito-borne disease, which kills one child every minute.
Gates said the disease was holding back development in many
countries, particularly in Africa. “We had setbacks in malaria where good drugs
have built up a resistance. Deaths were as high as 2 million a year but to have
them down to 600,000 a year is an amazing piece of progress.
“We have had this over-60% reduction by using bed nets,
and one of the biggest projects that our foundation supports in Liverpool is coming up with new chemicals to cover those bed
nets that mosquitoes are not resistant to.”
He said the aim was to shrink the area of the globe where the
disease is rife. “We did get a consensus that we can complete this by 2040,”
Gates said. “Eventually those 600,000 a year will go down to zero.”
Osborne has offered £500m a year for the next five years, which
will come out of Britain’s international development budget. The Gates
foundation will put up an additional £140m.
The money will go into the Ross
Fund – named after Sir
Ronald Ross, the British scientist who won a
Nobel prize in 1902 for proving that mosquitoes transmitted malaria.
The government’s commitment is a significant increase on past
expenditure. It is part of Osborne’s drive to prioritise aid programmes that
may benefit the UK – such as by targeting illnesses that threaten to become
global pandemics.
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When questioned whether this was the best way to spend British
taxpayers’ money at a time of austerity, he said both the Ebola epidemic and
the Syrian refugee crisis had influenced his decision to pledge the aid.
He said: “Two events in the last year or so have shown the
British people the value of commitment to tackling big international problems.
“First we had the Ebola outbreak and the second has been the
Syrian crisis. If we had left Ebola unchecked it would have been potentially
overwhelming in Europe and causing us all sorts of challenges here at home.
Equally with the Syrian refugee crisis, you have to provide support to children
and families in camps in places like Lebanon and Jordan.
“So in both those cases British aid is not just helping to
improve our world but actually supports national interests, and it is
overwhelmingly in Britain’s national interest to eradicate malaria.”
Osborne said eradicating malaria would lead to a more prosperous
world, with African countries being able to spend money on their infrastructure
rather than ploughing it into treating malaria cases.
He pointed out that “several thousand Britons” contracted the
disease every year and this research would result in fewer cases.
The tropical medicine school, which is part of the University of
Liverpool, houses the world’s largest mosquito collection and has pioneered
research to stem the spread of the disease.
One of the school’s projects involves research into infusing bed
nets with mosquito-repellent chemicals to make them even more effective in
preventing children in Africa from being bitten in their sleep.
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“Bill Gates can go anywhere in the world – he is one of the most
successful people in our lifetime and he has chosen to come here,” said
Osborne. “He is a smart guy who has chosen to invest in the work that you are
doing in Liverpool and you should take this as a massive endorsement of what
you do.”
Five British universities will be carrying out research for the
project.
During the press conference, the footballer Kolo Touré spoke
about his own battle against malaria after contracting the disease four times.
Touré, who plays for Liverpool, said he had suffered from the
potentially deadly illness many times after being bitten by mosquitoes in his
home country of Ivory Coast.
The 34-year-old most recently contracted the disease before the
World Cup in Brazil and said he had been “totally wiped out”. He also told of
friends who were currently suffering from the disease.
“Malaria is tough,” he said. “It makes you really, really tired.
You feel like you have no power at all. As a footballer, if you have it, you
can lose all your fitness in two days. Imagine that for a child, it’s even
worse.”
He added: “I have friends right now who are suffering from this
disease and I am very happy about all this funding. I want to say thank you to
all the people who are trying to eradicate this disease.”
The Ross Fund was set up in November to invest in global health
research to support the fight against the disease and other neglected and
emerging infectious illnesses.
At the time Osborne pledged a one-off contribution of £1bn to
the fund. That undertaking has since been expanded to £2.5bn over five years.
There were 438,000 malaria deaths in 2015, most of them
of children aged under five, and the majority in Africa, according to the
World Health Organisation.
Citation:
"Osborne:
Malaria Eradication Will Create More Prosperous World."
The Gaurdian. Guardian News and
Media Limited, 25 Jan. 2016. Web. 25 Jan. 2016. <http://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/jan/25/bill-gates-george-osborne-pledge-eliminate-malaria>.
Response: This
article talks about the recent plan to eradicate Malaria completely by the year
2040. This would change the world, especially third world countries, in
incredible ways. If Bill Gates, George Osborne, and the universities that are
researching this all keep up their ends of the deal, things are predicted to go
very well. This article seems to have a bias towards Gates and Osborne along
with Britain because of their major contribution to this research. Overall, I think that this article was very
informational and very helpful in understanding the plans that they have to
eradicate Malaria and improve life for people all over the world.
